


Wordsworth

by Tammany



Series: Easter Daffodils [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Gen, Matchmaking, Matchmaking payoff, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 05:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2416223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel, that I should not have written because *editing*, but it called to me.</p><p>Sherlock's matchmaking blossoms.</p><p>Sequel to "April Daffodils."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wordsworth

 

Bloody Sherlock, Mycroft thought, as he watched DCI Lestrade stumbling around Mummy’s kitchen like a light-blinded mole. Calling the man out only to go swanning off to his bedroom before the man arrived…with not so much as a note to explain. And leaving him to Mummy’s tender care?

“Here,” he said, tersely, shoving a mug of strong tea toward the other man. “It should help. And here’s the paracetemol.”

Lestrade hummed hoarsely, sounding like a growling cat or a rather poorly maintained electric mower. He shook out four tabs and gulped them down with tea, gasping as the heat tore its way down his throat. “Gawd…”

Mycroft didn’t deign to comment on the stupidity of gulping fresh-made tea without first testing the heat. But, then, it wasn’t entirely clear Lestrade was complaining so much as merely exclaiming as the liquid scoured away the after-effects of a night on the sofa after too many hot rum toddies.

“Sherlock up, yet?” Lestrade’s voice was still a bit rough. He gave a wet cough, clearing his throat and lungs. “Sorry. Just quit smoking again, and I’m in the nasty stages—lungs clearing out.”

“Sherlock’s asleep still, and likely to remain so. He’s like a corpse when he comes home: out until almost lunch time. Old habits…” Mycroft burrowed through Mummy’s refrigerator, contemplating breakfast choices. There was a packet of store-brand crumpets in the same drawer as the cheese and butter. He pulled the pack out and wandered across the tiles toward the toaster. “Would you like crumpets, Inspector?

He considered, then grunted assent. “Yeah, sure. Sounds good.” Then he moaned as he twisted his neck and stretched, trying to work out kinks in his muscles. “Bloody hell. Any idea what Sherlock called me out here for?”

“None, I’m afraid.” He dropped four crumpets into the slots, took out small bread plates and butter knives, and went rummaging in the cupboards looking for honey. He found a wide-mouthed jar half filled with honey with a huge wodge of honeycomb sitting in the middle. “Mummy and Father appear to be going locavore,” he said, with uncertainty. “No idea if it’s any good. You want some?” He held it up.

“Are there still bee grubs in it?”

Mycroft pondered, squinting. “Not so near as I can determine.”

“Then, yeah, why the fuck not… Butter?”

“Gobs,” Mycroft assured him.

“Well that’s good, then,” Lestrade said, sounding a bit cheered. “Hot tea, buttered crumpets wi’ honey. Makes up for a lot, that does.”

Mycroft found himself smiling—and not just his prim office-smile. “The things he puts us through,” he murmured. The toaster popped, and he grabbed two crumpets, tossed a tea-towel over the toaster to hold the heat in the remaining ones, and quickly slathered butter and honey on the two he’d removed. The butter and honey almost instantly went molten and fluid, filling the little holes in the moist bread. He shoved the plate over to Lestrade. “Here. Hurry, now, don’t let them get cold.” He’d said the same words a million times to Sherlock growing up. Sherlock had been given to dawdling and playing with his food: “Experiments,” he’d liked to call it. Poking holes from cranny to cranny in the crumpets, seeing how large a joined reservoir he could construct before he lost control and the hot liquid honey-butter flooded the plate, making the crumpet inedible without fork and knife.

Lestrade was more focused. He gripped the first crumpet lightly, holding the edge of the disk between thumb and index finger, and bit deep, turning the round into a crescent moon that oozed honey. He licked his lips…

Mycroft pondered. Beautiful lips. Sherlock, too, had had a beautiful mouth, not that Mycroft had ever felt quite right noting it—though observation insisted that it was a reasonably objective truth, by normal standards of human aesthetics. He’d usually been worrying that those beautiful lips were so smeared with honey or jam or butter or whatever that he’d have to wash his brother before he could be let outside the house. Lestrade was tidier, and his quick tongue lapped away the little that escaped in spite of his care. Mycroft gave a dry chuff of laughter, amused at the idea of comparing Lestrade with young Sherlock.

“What? Have I got a bit on my chin or somethin’?”

“No. Just remembering. I used to get Sherlock his breakfast. He was messier than you.”

Lestrade rolled his eyes. “Daresay he was,” he said. “Silly bugger probably ran you ragged.”

“He was…somewhat labor intensive,” Mycroft conceded.

Lestrade studied him. “Good older brother, you?”

“For the most part,” Mycroft admitted. “And enough older than Sherlock to feel some responsibility.”

“Bet the little brat milked it for all it was worth.”

Mycroft gave a crooked smile, then remembered his own crumpets. He took them out, buttered and honeyed them, and took a bite. “Reasonably good honey after all,” he said.

“You weren’t sure?”

“One never knows with artisanal local products, does one?” Mycroft sniffed. “It could be wonderful. It could be a local tradition made ‘special’ by granny spitting in it.”

Lestrade gave a deep, husky bark of laughter. “Cynic, you.”

“It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to hold down the spot.”

“Sarking for England, then?”

“Too old for competitive sarking,” Mycroft said. “I leave that to the young chaps. I just like to keep my hand in.” He brushed the crumbs from his mouth and shirt with a paper towel and collected his and Lestrade’s plates and cups, washing them quickly under the hot tap in the sink. “I’m going out for a walk,” he said. “Do you want to come with, or would you rather get a bit more of a kip before everyone else is up and trumpeting around the place?”

Lestrade looked out the window. It was early, barely past dawn. The light was pale and cold, and a fine mist rolled across the garden and the fields and woods beyond. “Not kitted out for anything ambitious,” he said. “Got a decent jacket, and shoes fit to wear to a crime scene. Not hiking gear, though.”

“Not going on a hike,” Mycroft said, making a face. “Far too hup-ho for a civilized man to face this early in the day. I leave that sort of thing to people like Sherlock and Dr. Watson when the mood takes them. All I thought to do was walk down to the creek about a mile down the road. Toss pebbles over the side and watch the perch rally around hoping for breakfast.”

“Hard on the perch.”

“I am without mercy and compassion,” Mycroft said. “Ask any of my subordinates. Better, ask any of our enemies. They’ll be glad to give you verified details. Tormenting perch is like running scales to an opera tenor.” The look Lestrade gave him suggested complete disbelief. Mycroft frowned and raised his chin. “Don’t give me that look. Even Moriarty realized that much.”

“Uh-huh. Heartless.” Lestrade snorted, and stood. “Where’d your mum put my jacket last night? Any idea?”

“Coat cupboard, probably,” Mycroft said. “If she didn’t get sidetracked and put it in the freezer or leave it down in the cellar when she went to fetch a new bottle of rum, or on the back of the sofa in her office when she thought of just one more possible way to resolve her current project.” He sloped easily to the coat cupboard and checked. “Ah, she must have been more focused than she often is—right here, where it ought to be.” He drew it out, and looked Lestrade over. “It’s damp out. You need a scarf.”

“Brought a scarf.”

Mycroft sniffed. “Brought a city scarf. Elegant—I’ll give you that. You’ve a nice taste in scarves. Not warm, though.” He dug around, and found one of Mummy’s knitting attempts. “Here. Lambswool.”

Lestrade gave him the hairy eyeball. “Orange, Mycroft.”

“It’s a preemptive shock blanket?” Mycroft has heard John and Sherlock’s version of the night John killed Jeff Hope. “Just in case you go into shock, you’re prepared.”

“More likely to send me into shock in the first place,” Lestrade said, dangling the wooly monster between his fingers. “Try again, sunshine. Doesn’t your da have anything a bit less likely to make innocent children hide behind the sofa?”

Mycroft sighed, while internally admitting to himself that offering that old nightmare had been more mischievous than serious. Still, it would have been amusing to have talked Lestrade into it. He found a long, soft scarf in a textured knit, almost like oversized thermal weave. It’s in Father’s beloved reds and golds. “Here,” he said. “Try this.”

“Gryffindor colors,” Lestrade noted. “Hero, me.” He swept it around his neck, crossing it over his chest, and pulled on a sturdy wool peacoat over it.

“Not your usual city jacket,” Mycroft noted.

“Not going to the city, was I?” Lestrade huffed, a good natured, if mildly curmudgeonly bear. “And what if the car broke down? Think I want to be stranded on the shoulder with nothing to keep me warm but my mac?”

The red and gold stripes glow against the dark navy, and coat and scarf together combine with strong shoulders to make his chest and upper body seen broader and more sturdy than ever. Mycroft is used to ignoring the obvious where Lestrade is concerned, though. The man is straight, if divorced, and almost as private as he himself is—if by no means as introverted. But he can spend a week in pubs and never reveal a thing about himself he doesn’t want to. Mycroft treats him as he deserves—as a respected, if subordinate compatriot in espionage. A professional, with all the secrets and privacy and reserve that implied.

Mycroft pulled himself into an old wool anorak—the kind with fake horn buttons on braided cord and a hood that was never quite deep enough. It was his own, long ago, in his last years before leaving home entirely for the last time. After he left, it became Sherlock’s for a while, then Father’s backup, and then just a spare coat kept just in case—in case of accidents, guests, or failure of the central heating, when all the coat one could muster might prove practical. He burrowed for another scarf, finding a long, light green scarf slight enough to wear in a larks-head knot like Sherlock used on his own blue scarf. It added a bit of warmth and bulk to what would have otherwise been inadequate.

Once they were out and past the garden gate, they fell into a silent march, side by side. The day was still young; the fog still rolled and billowed over the land, seldom higher than Mycroft’s head, but never lower than their knees. It was light and near-transparent, only the curves and rolling edges of waves showing clearly, the rest a faint silver veil over the meadows and trees.

“Sherlock and I saw roe deer last night,” Mycroft said. “If we keep an eye we may spot more this morning.”

Lestrade nodded and kept on walking. It was just cool enough to send his breath puffing from his mouth, faint but present—tiny little clouds, like smoke.

“I’m glad to hear you’re quitting cigarettes again,” Mycroft said, free-associating. “If I can help….”

Lestrade grunted. “Nah. Keep me unstressed? Good luck with that.” He flashed Mycroft a smile, though, suggesting he appreciated the offer.

They kept on, their feet crunching on the grit of the lane. An owl hushed overhead, seeming to leap out of the meadow grass headed for the forest beyond. Both men jumped, laughed uneasily, and smiled at each other.

A jay called, sharp and scolding.

Mycroft, pacing along, considered the peculiar nature of country silence. It was, of course, no more silent than city silences—not really. Listening he could hear dogs barking in the distance, cattle lowing to come into the milking sheds to be milked, sheep on the high pastures, cars and trucks on the nearby highway, a train rattling its way north toward Scotland. Somewhere a child calls to other children, that unmistakable sound of annoyed shouting between non-adults.

“Deer-track,” he said, pointing down at the soft shoulder of the road. “Headed for the stream, I think.”

“Roe deer?”

“Fallow.”

Lestrade gave him a smile that said he was pleasantly unsurprised by Mycroft’s ability to identify deer by tracks alone. A silent “I might have known you’d know” passed between them.

Mycroft ducked his head, hiding a small smile. He was not so melodramatic as Sherlock, but as John Watson has noted, he was not without his own fondness for a bit of show-off and theater. So much of what he is capable of either does not display well to others—or is sufficiently classified that he’d be abusing his authority to use it in minor panto performed to make a coworker applaud.

They came at last to the bridge over the stream—an old stone bridge of brown fieldstone mortared together and covered in moss and lichen. The bridge is narrow—one car can manage it at a time, and there are little pull-overs on either side for another car to wait in as a first makes the crossing. The bridge is edged with a roughly made rail with slightly uneven arches.

The men leaned on the rail together, looking over the rail at the rushing water only a couple of yards below their feet. The water races along, folding, furling, unfurling over dark rocks. Grass is swept up along the banks, and willows cluster. Upstream there’s an old ford where many still cross, but the location hadn’t offered the high rock foundations for the bridge that this place had provided.

A fish leaps, snaps a flying insect out of the air, and falls back again, flipping away.

“One of your perch?”

“No. Trout.”

“Bet you know what kind.”

Mycroft smiled. “Brown. You spent time in the West Country as a boy, Lestrade. Do you really not know a brown trout when you see it?”

Lestrade didn’t meet his eye, but he grinned a tucked in, wicked little grin. He said nothing.

Mycroft chuffed, amused. They both were quiet. Then Mycroft said, “I don’t think Sherlock has a case, you know.”

“Just makin’ work for me—drive out for nothing, waste my night?”

“I think it would be more accurate to say it was his inelegant way of inviting you to join the family for the holiday. A bit late, mind you, but—well, Sherlock….” He let his voice trail off in a way that suggested they both knew far too well what Sherlock was like, after all.

“And this is where you drop me a hint and send me on my way?”

Mycroft was surprised to hear a faint note of insecurity in Lestrade’s voice. A note of a man expecting just that—to be sent on his way with a flea in his ear. His lips tightened. “No,” he said. “I think this is where I point out the deer up on the upper bank. See?”

Lestrade’s head shot up, and he scanned the top line of the rising land. He just managed to bite back a low whistle. “Blimey. A white one…”

“Yes. There’s a line of leucistic deer in this region, and has been for generations.”

The deer were beautiful. The [buck was pale](https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3451/3867323041_a6c74d2887.jpg), but not as [white as the younger doe](http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/wp-content/uploads/deer-5.jpg) in [his harem](http://www.fotwd.org/images/home3.jpg). He and the other two does were varying shades of chestnut, from his own pale near-gold to their rich russet. The spots stood out clear and bright, shining along their flanks. The buck’s antlers, new and still in velvet, were wide and palmate—not as wide as a moose or a European elk’s, but nowhere near as sharp-tined as a red deer’s.

The white doe, though—she was a magic thing. Delicate, with white-on-white dapples, her spots just that trace more white and differently textured than the rest of her pelt.

They minced along the high ridgeline, outlined against the clearing sky, the last arabesques of fog twining over and around them. The buck raised his head, posing in his glory. He led his herd down, over the ridge, the little white doe skipping along behind, the last to crest the hill and disappear.

“They used to call them fairy deer, back in the West Country,” Lestrade said. “In Somerset. Fairy deer…”

“Mmmm.” Mycroft closed his eyes. “They’re beautiful.” He opened his eyes again, and said, “I’d like to show you something, since you’re here.” He turned and headed back down the lane, Lestrade sloping along beside him, hands deep in his pockets.

“You have heard I’m gay?” Mycroft said, his voice light, dispassionate, and detached.

“Mmm,” Lestrade said, a note that neither approved nor disapproved nor suggested he had any particular right to do either.

“Well—Sherlock,” Mycroft said again, a bit sadly. “It wasn’t an easy coming out. He’s not entirely at ease with it even now.”

Lestrade snorted. “Sherlock doesn’t like his people to be all complicated and human,” he said.

  
“Yes. Well.” Mycroft kept moving, eyes scanning the shoulders of the road and the rolling shape of the meadows, not looking at his companion. “I just thought… If you’re family now… The thing is, sometimes there’s very little to clearly differentiate between companionship and a come-on. I didn’t want you to be concerned or uncomfortable. And—if you are, do please feel free to say so?”

“No worries.”

“Good. Well. Good, then.” Mycroft gestured, then, pointing to the faintest of tracks across a field. “There. It’s off the trail, into the woods a little way. Come on.” He stepped off the road and waded firmly into the tangle of meadow weeds and grasses, not letting the clutch and tangle around his shins and ankles slow him down, breaking the way for Lestrade like an ice-cutter breaking the way for a more fragile ship.

They cut over the meadow, pausing only for a moment to admire a spider-web beaded with sparkling dew, and to chuckle as a mouse panicked at their approach, diving off a twist of fallen branch and scurrying away into the high green grass. Then Mycroft showed Lestrade the little trail through low scrub oak and imported mountain laurel gone wild, into the wood. Crows shouted at them, squirrels raced overhead shaking loose old bark, some animal they couldn’t see crashed away through the understory. At last they came to the edge of a clearing, just exactly as true morning arrived and the sun blossomed over the open space.

“Oh-my-God,” Lestrade said, voice on the boundary where laughter met awe. “Oh-my-God. Wordsworth.”

Mycroft smiled, fighting back a sudden urge to weep that it had worked so perfectly. “’A host of golden daffodils’” he said, the quotation a confirmation and a joyful pronouncement at the same time. “I thought there was a chance they’d be ready. They’re only there for a week or two in spring. But it seemed like the right weather for them…”

The little dell was covered from one side to the other with daffodils just reaching perfect bloom. They were lovely to the eye, lovely to the nose.  The air was sharp with the sweet-bitter green-gold perfume of them—a smell too aggressive and harsh to be pretty, but to wonderful to be anything less than beautiful. Mycroft squatted down and touched the wide-open throat of one. “I think they’re King Alfreds,” he said. “They were popular for naturalizing for, oh, decades and decades. And as you said—Wordsworth. Someone wanted to evoke that, I think.”

“It’s not natural?”

“What’s natural?” Mycroft asked. “No one’s touched them for as long as I’ve known about. Does it matter who put them here first?”

“No,” Lestrade said.

“I’ve never shown it to Sherlock,” Mycroft said.

Lestrade was silent for a long time. Mycroft wondered if he heard the weight of that statement—that Mycroft had kept this secret from the child who’d been his only peer and companion for so long. After a while Lestrade huffed, and said, “Yeah. I can see that.”

Mycroft had been terrified his baby brother would laugh, or scold, or decide it needed to be “experimented” on—and Mycroft needed it to simply be, untouched, unchallenged. “I don’t think I missed a single spring until I moved to London permanently,” he said. “I even managed to see them when I was attending uni.” Then he said, “I should pick a bunch for Mummy. She’d love a vase full for the table.” He began picking, tucking the long stems in the turn of his elbow, letting the golden heads hang free over his arm.

Lestrade helped, picking carefully, making sure he didn’t leave any part of the dell naked of flowers.

“That should do,” Mycroft said when he couldn’t securely hold any more. He straightened up, and they walked away back toward the lane.

“I’m not gay,” Lestrade said, quietly, feet crunching through old leaves and squishing in soft humus. “But—I’m not exactly straight, either, you know. Never have been, not that it’s anything I’ve done damn-all about so far. But I’m not afraid of it, Mike. No matter where it goes, right? So if it matters…feel free to say. Right?”

Mycroft wasn’t sure if his heart was panicking or rejoicing. “Right,” he said, and walked beside his friend all the way home, with his arms and his heart and his mind filled with gold and the scent of daffodils. He didn't fail to spot his brother hiding behind the sheer curtains of the upper window as they came in through the garden gate.

He narrowed his eyes at his baby brother and nodded, then smiled. After a long, uncertain hesitation, Sherlock nodded and smiled in return, his face the faintest ghost behind the silvery veil.


End file.
